Saturday, October 27, 2012

Oh, Lance.

The UCI has stripped Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France wins. I am not surprised by this in any way. I am also not that angry. This was coming a long way off. I hope Lance's efforts with philanthropy go better.

What was surprising was their decision to leave the winner spot vacant for those seven years. This is a bigger gap than for either of the World Wars. I can't think of a more telling sign than that. Professional bike racing is broken, and everyone knows it. I have discussed before my ideas for how to fix the issues. I hope this provides a good place to start that discussion.

Sadly I don't think anyone is going to make any real changes to the way races are run. Sure there will be talk about "getting tough" or "cracking down" on doping. In the end I just think it will end in more testing but won't more effective. The problem is the way the races are run, and the culture surrounding them. Adding more tests won't solve that problem. I hope UCI has the courage to find and fix the real issues to their problems.

-Dravis